Treasure Trove A Collection of ICSE Poems Workbook Answers Chapter 5 Notes – Television – ICSE Class 10, 9 English
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About the Poem
‘Television’ is one of Roald Dahl’s best-known poems. It is a long didactic poem. It has a message relevant to our times. It’ is about the negative effects that television can have on young minds. It also offers the advice that children should read books instead of watching television. This poem appeals to young readers and older ones alike, for the amusing tone that it takes in approaching its subject. Dahl believed that young people need to experience life to really grow and thrive. He was concerned that watching too-much television worked against actualizing a child’s potential. He made his feelings known about that in the poem called “Television.”
Roald Dalai seems to have entered into every contemporary British household as he’s writing this poem. Living as he did in the twentieth century, he saw the introduction of many, many new and innovative electronic products. The television was one of those products, and perhaps the most controversial one among them. Even now, the effects of watching television for long hours are discussed in certain circles with some amount of disapproval. Dahl is quite the vocal one of that company. He also takes the opportunity to create a parallel landscape in which books abound, and are found everywhere within the house. Such a landscape, he is sure, will encourage children to read.
About the Poet
Roald Dahl was a British novelist, short story writer, poet, screenwriter, and fighter pilot. He (1916-1990) was born in Wales to Norwegian parents. A prolific writer, he was a member of the British Royal Air Force, during World War II. He was known as a flying ace. After the war, he became a writer who gained world-wide admiration. His stories for children are still being made into films.
Dahl served in the Royal Air Force during World War 11, in which he became a flying ace and intelligence officer, rising to the rank of acting wing commander. He rose to prominence in the 1940s with works for both children and adults and became one of the world’s best-selling authors. He has been referred to as “one of the greatest storytellers for children of the 20th century”. Among his awards for contribution to literature, he received the World Fantasy Award for Life Achievement in 1983, and Children’s Author of the Year from the British Book Awards in 1990. In 2008 The Times placed Dahl 16th on its list of “The 50 greatest British writers since 1945”.
Dahl’s first published work, inspired by a meeting with C. S. Forester, was “A Piece of Cake” on 1 August 1942. His first children’s book was The Gremlins, published in 1943, about mischievous little creatures that were part of RAF folklore. All the RAF pilots blamed the gremlins for all the problems with the aircraft. Dahl went on to create some of the best-loved children’s stories of the 20th century, such as Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Matilda, James and the Giant Peach, The Witches, Fantastic Mr Fox, The BFG, The Twits and George’s Marvellous Medicine. Dahl also had a successful parallel career as the writer of macabre adult short stories, usually with a dark sense of humour and a surprise ending. The Mystery Writers of America presented Dahl with three Edgar Awards” for his work. He died on 23 November 1990, at the age of 74 of a blood disease in Oxford, and was buried in the cemetery at St Peter and St Paul’s Church in Great Missenden, Buckinghamshire, England.
Central Idea
In this poem, Dahl wishes to warn readers about how television can have the effect of dulling children’s minds. Watching television can make children unimaginative, and prevent them from enjoying the fairy tales they are supposed to like. On the other hand, reading is a good habit for children. It sharpens their minds, and introduces them to whole new worlds they never knew existed. Therefore, Dahl requests parents to bring back the books they had read before the invention of television back into their homes.
Word Meanings
- Gaping (V) – Watching with eyes wide open for a,long time
- Loll (V) – Sit, lie or stand in a lazy, relaxed way
- Slop (V) – Laze around
- Lounge about (V) – To be idle
- Hypnotised (V) – Fascinated
- Punch (V) – Hit with fist
- Tot (N) – Child
- Rots (N) – Decays by the action of bacteria and fungi
- Clutters (V) – Covers or fills something with an untidy collection of things
- Fantasy (N) – A genre of imaginative fiction involving magic and adventure especially in a setting other than the real world
- Rust (V) – Forming a red or orange coating on the surface of iron when exposed to air and moisture
- Gadzooks (N) – An expression of surprise
- Nursery (N) – A room in a house for the special use of young children
- Galore (Adj) – In abundance
- Gypsies (N) – Groups of travelling people with dark skin and hair traditionally living by itinerant trade and fortune telling
- Smugglers (N) – A person who moves goods illegally into our out of a country
- Muffled (Adj) – Not loud sound because of being obstructed in some way
- Oars (N) – Poles with flat blade, used to row or steer a boat through water
- Cannibals (N) – People who eat the flesh of human beings
- Rotter (N) – A cruel, mean or unkind person
- Rump-(N) – The hind part of the body of the mammal
- Ridiculous (Adj) – Deserving or inviting mockery
- Nauseating (Adj) – Causing a feeling of disgust
- Foul (Adj) – Offensive to the senses, especially through having a disgusting smell or taste or being dirty
- Repulsive (Adj) – Arousing intense distaste or disgust
Paraphrase
In lines 1-6 , Roald Dahl is addressing all British parents and telling them that the most important thing one must learn while raising children is to keep them away from the television set. He also says that it is possible to come to a better solution to the problem by not installing a television set in their homes in the first place.
In lines 7-12, Dahl speaks as if he has undertaken a long research on the bad effects of watching television by visiting a large number of households in Britain. In most houses, he has found the children lazing about all day and staring at the television screen without doing any productive work at all. Next, he indulges in a bit of exaggeration that is nonetheless amusing when he says that sometimes the children stare so hard that their eyeballs fall off & he has seen a dozen eyeballs rolling about on the floor in one house.
In lines 13-16, Dahl says that children entire attention is captured by the television screen and they cannot concentrate on anything other than what they are watching.
In lines 17-24, Dahl admits that he knows that television can be a convenient way to keep children occupied. While watching television, children never cause trouble or throw tantrums. As a result, their parents can go about doing their household chores without any interruption. However, parents do not stop to consider what television might do to their children.
Lines 25-33 are written in capitals to emphasize that they carry the main message of the poem. This message is that watching too much television fills up the mid of children with useless facts while at the same time destroying their ability to create or understand worlds of fantasy in their imagination. It takes away their ability to think and they can only keep staring at the television screen
In lines34-37, Dahl anticipates what the parents’ next question would be. They might agree to take away the television set from their children but will ask how they are supposed to now keep their children entertained and occupied
In lines 38-41, Dahl tells parents that they cannot have forgotten how children kept themselves entertained before the recent invention of the television.
In lines 42-48, Dahl says that before the coming of television children would read and it is a shame that now they don’t.
In lines 49-52, Dahl creates the alternate landscape that has been mentioned in the section on the poem’s setting. In this landscape, children’s rooms are filled to the brim with books.
In lines 53-62, Dahl talks about the kind of typical fantasy stories that the children would read in his day. These were stories of adventure with many interesting characters.
In lines 63-72, Dahl pays a tribute to another children author like him- Beatrix Potter. Potter’s books were known for the use of animals as characters, and the various colourful illustrations.
In lines 73-80, Dahl makes an earnest appeal to parents to throw away their television set and replace it with a bookshelf, ignoring all the objection of their children.
In lines 81-85, Dahl feels sure that sooner or later the children will turn to reading books to pass the time.
In lines 86-94, Dahl says that the children will not be able to stop reading books once they have started & then will wonder why they had ever liked watching television. In the end the children will thank their parents for introducing them to books.
Summary
‘Television’ consists of a total of 94 lines. The poet stresses about the importance of books in the lives of the children and most importantly, how this passion for books has been substituted with the addiction for television. The poet highlights the vitality of books which are, however, ignored because of television. The poet feels that television is like an evil which hinders the growth of brains for the children and hampers their creativity.The poet starts the the poem with the old saying by elders to keep the children away from the television set. The poet has made this statement very aggressively. He compares the television set to be as bad as an idiot box.
Next, the poet says that it is not uncommon to see the children sitting and staring continuously at the television sets. In almost every house, the same scene is to be seen. The children are so obsessed at watching television, they sit in awkward poses. The children do not even care about how are they sitting ,or if they are in fact sitting also or just about to fall from the couch they are sitting on, but the mast interesting part is that their eyes will be deeply focused at the television sets. They do not even care about their eyes. It would feel as if their eye balls will come out, but still they would not be tired of watching the TV.
The poet is then referring to his own experience where he went to someone’s house and was astonished to see so many people staring at the TV continuously as if they were sitting in front of the TV since very long. It looked as if they were hypnotized by the scenes in the TV. They stare continuously and do not even blink their eyes once. It seems as if they have the hang-over of watching the TV, which is nothing more than a junk box.
The poet believes that it is the TV set which make the children immobile. They are in a sedentary position all day and thus, do not move out of the house to play or undertake any physical exercises or sports etc. They do not even move out, mingle with each other, play together or even fight. This hampers their physical ability and growth. Not only their _ physical fitness, even their brains stop working.
The poet then refers to the lack of the personal touch that parents have with their children. The small arguments and even scoldings are also essential in life, else it becomes very dull. In this case, the children in a way are lost in their own aloof world and do not care about anything else. They do not demand any time from the parents. The parents are free to do their own work. This way, an unusual silence comes in the relationships and the personal touch is lost.
But here, is the role of an ideal parent. The poet is shaking the consciousness of the parents in the next part of the poem. He is informing about the ill effects the TV sets.
The TV sets make the children dull, and spoils the important senses in the brains of the child. The imagination and creativity is also jammed and the innovative thinking is also dead. The child stops thinking on his or her own and only fusses on the facts and knowledge he gets from the TV, his own sense of creativity is lost in this case. His thought process stops and corrodes as if it is filled with rust and freezes.
The poet next, focuses on the dilemma suffered by the parents. The parents understand that the televisions are of course not good for the development and growth of their child, but then what should they do to entertain the children? The substitute for television needs to be thought about, which is as entertaining as the TV sets and even overcomes the flaws which TV has. The answer to this is quite simple. In order to get the answer, the parents should take their thinking prior to the time when TV set was invented. In the good old times, children used to get entertained as well without the TV sets. The poet is taking everyone to the past and emphasises on the time when children read books.
The poet now requests the parents to throw away the television sets and instead get those old book shelves and lovely books back to its place. Children should have a lovely book shelf hanging on the wall, which will increase the beauty of the wall. And then, only the shelf is not enough, it should be filled will books and many books. This action by the parents will not be liked by the children at first and the children might oppose this by different actions like screaming, shouting and even worse. But the parents should give in. Things will settle down on their own in some time.
And once they will start reading the books, the real joy will come then. They themselves will understand the joy of reading and soon will gain interest. These books will make their own place in the hearts of the children and they will become fond of reading. That will be the day when they will realize that they had been wasting a lot of their precious time in watching the television. They will understand the worth of the books and how worthless it was watching television. The children will love you (parents) all the more for throwing away the television and bringing them near to the books. Thus, finally, he requests the parents to do away with the television sets from their homes and instead place a nice book shelf at its place and fill it with good books. This will aid the children build their knowledge, creativity and at the end, will make them successful. No matter, the children might rebel at this change and even argue and fight with the parents to throw away their favourite television, but at the end, they will be benefitting out of it. And a day will come, when they will acknowledge and thank the parents for doing so.
Critical Appreciation
In this poem, Dahl wishes to warn readers about how television can have the effect of dulling children’s minds. Watching television can make children unimaginative, and prevent them from enjoying the fairy tales they are supposed to like. On the other hand, reading is a good habit for children. It sharpens their minds, and introduces them to whole new worlds they never knew existed. Therefore, Dahl requests parents to bring back the books they had read before the invention of television back into their homes.
The poet makes the television set like an evil which hinders the growth of brains of the children and hampers their creativity. The poet starts the piece of the poem with the old saying by elders to keep the children away from the television set. The poet has made this statement very aggressively. He compares the television set to be as bad as an idiot box. One should keep the children away from the television set or may be the best part would be instead, never install the television sets in the house. The poet is shaking the consciousness of the parents in the poem. He is informing about the ill effects the TV sets causes to the lovely children. The TV sets makes the children dull, and spoils the important senses in the brains of the child. The imagination and creativity is also jammed and the innovative thinking is also dead.
That the television is called the ‘idiot box’ might have something to do with the kinds of effect Dahl imagines it has in children. This phrase is actually a transferred epithet, in the sense that it is not the television set that is idiotic, but that idiocy is produced in the watchers of television. When we watch television, it is a passive process on our parts. We do not actively engage with the material as we do while reading and imagining the words on the page coming to life. This passivity ultimately makes the work of our brain slower and more strained.
Amidst all the people of his time, Dahl was perhaps singularly ahead of his time when he predicted that television would spell the death of imagination in children’s minds. As a children’s author, he must have known more than others how children’s faces light up when they read or listen to a story, and how they often lose themselves in the details of a book as their imagination constructs entire worlds for them in their minds. However, television hands them ready images. As a result, their imagination suffers and they later become sceptical in thinking that what they cannot see is not real. If all children thought that way, an author like Dahl would actually go out of business.
Even though Dahl was writing primarily for children, the message of this particular poem seems more intended for their parents than for them. Dahl believes that it is a parent’s duty to inculcate the habit of reading in his or her children. Children might not know any better than watching television for hours, but parents do. In their hurry to get all their work finished, they ignore their children’s long hours of television-watching. However, by putting their own convenience aside, they should introduce their children to the wonderful world of books.
Roald Dahl always wrote keeping his audience in mind. Therefore it is no surprise that the tone of this poem is light, amusing and entertaining. He obviously meant for his readers’ to not feel that he was preaching to them.
Despite its light tone, the message of this poem still rings true for its readers. That a book can open up one’s mind is a lesson that every writer wants his readers to know. The tone of this poem is contrary to what has led the poet to pen his thoughts here. Dahl is a man who lived through a period of great many inventions, including that of television. However, he is not excited by this so-called progress and development of the human race. He hankers for the olden days when life was simpler, and little pleasures were more easily experienced. He associates television with the loss of innocence in children. He is saddened to see that children do not any longer read books as ardently as they used when he was younger. He longs to change this, and ‘Television’ comes out of his meagre attempt to do so. In characteristic style, his aim is both to entertain and edify his readers – young and old alike.
This rhetorical device is used when a poet addresses his or her poem to an absent audience. Dahl uses the device of apostrophe when he addresses his poem to English parents and advises them on doing away with their television sets.
This rhetorical device is used to give human qualities to something that is incapable of human actions. Dahl uses the device of personification in two cases – first, when he gives television the human ability to kill something, and second, when he gives ‘Imagination’ the human ability to die at its hands.
The other device used by Dahl is the hyphen. The pause made by the he hyphen gives a sense of hanging. It means to invite the readers to read and think at a certain pace. As a result, voice is able to make the up and down to the emotional effect and in the same time infiltrate the readers with a continuous meaning transfer.
Any type of font does not changes the meaning of the words. But the font changing in the middle of a written line will change the focus and the emphasis. Here, the poet uses capitalized word for all words in the line 25-33 in a row.
Roald Dahl follows the same simple rhyme scheme throughout this poem – AABB and so on in a series of rhyming couplets. Only on one occasion does he diverge from this when the end words of the lines rhyme in lines 31, 32 & 33.
Thus we see that stylistic techniques used show the intention and/or the reason of the poet in making the poem which is usually hidden. Dahl adeptly uses language, style etc to highlight the ill effects of television versus the positive results of reading.
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